A real danger of fascism in SA

Last year Rhodes University academic Jane Duncan warned of “proto fascism” emerging in South Africa. At the same time, in an article for a local publication, I wrote that “the first loud, trumpet calls to fascism in modern South Africa have been sounded”. Both of us were referring to the actions and statements by, and the apparent financial backing for, the then president of the ANC Youth League, Julius Malema.

Last week at the twenty-fourth Socialist International (SI) congress in Cape Town, a similar warning about the threat of fascism was issued. However, this referred to a global danger. And this week, as the local mining industry faced turmoil, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) spokesperson, Lesiba Seshoka, also raised the spectre of fascism.

If such warnings are considered melodramatic, it can only be because fascism is a little understood, ill-defined term that tends to send shivers of apprehension through most minds. It does so because of its association with, particularly, Nazi Germany and gas chambers. But Hitler’s Germany was a particularly horrendous outgrowth of fascism; an extreme version of the ideology in practice.

Authoritarian and intolerant of democratic norms, fascism does not need to indulge in genocide to exist: the destruction of democratic structures, with mass obedience and acquiescence ensured by prison terms, intimidation and enforced exile is enough. Invariably, at the apex of what is a political pyramid, is the Leader.

This ideology exists as a form of political virus in every society marked by inequality and exploitation. In times of economic growth, stability and general feelings of hope for the future, it is relatively dormant, often to the extent that it is barely noticed, a minor pimple on the backside of the body politic.

At the core of fascist thinking are concepts of nationalism and ethnicity, of the notion of a single, defined, “national” group needing to be led to be led out of suffering caused by external or corrupt forces. It is an idea that ignores the realities of rich and poor, of oppressor and oppressed, exploiter and exploited existing within the same, nationally or ethnically defined groups. As such fascists are hostile to organisations such as trade unions that, for all their faults, usually uphold collective and egalitarian principles.

But authoritarian thinking and its political extension of fascism, can come into their own at times of crisis and when the existing political order — especially of the liberal, parliamentary variety — is seen widely to be failing and the traditional Left seems ideologically bankrupt and compromised. It is at such times that the wage and welfare gap and growing unemployment become more highly politicised.

The labour movement, internationally, has recognised for several years that such times are very much with us; times when demagogues emerge to prey on the insecurities, anger and fears of vulnerable workers in a way that often catapults would-be leaders to prominence.

This theme of a world in ongoing and politically dangerous crisis dominated the SI congress that came and went in Cape Town last week with scarcely a whimper, let alone a bang. And with no South African trade unionists in sight.

However, the more than 100 political parties and groups from around the world confirmed everything the labour movement has been saying for years about the global economy. Ironically, the voice of labour has also often been in opposition to many parties that are members of this extraordinarily diverse body that professes the democratic principles and “socialism” espoused by most trade unions.

If the ANC, the host member of the SI, is a broad church, the SI qualifies as a veritable Tower of ideological Babel. But, in most cases, the representative parties and groups owe — or at least once owed — their origins or support to organised workers.

This means that even parties in opposition to one another on a national level can be members. In Mauritius, for example, the governing Labour Party is a member alongside the opposition Mauritian Militant Movement. And in Mali, an umbrella movement — Adema-PASJ — that brings together four political parties, has a seat at the SI table.

Former East European communist parties that have altered their outlooks, although not necessarily many of their leaders, also now march under the SI banner. Yet there seems to be unanimous — in some cases, perhaps belated — agreement among all SI members that the global economic crisis has far from run its course; that much turbulence still lies ahead.

With this conclusion comes the analysis that trickle-down, neo-liberal, Washington consensus policies have failed. To which the labour movement can chorus: we told you so. Except that it and the political Left have done little to fill the vaccuum created, leaving the way open to the demagogic Right that, in South Africa, has a distinctly local flavour.

According to striking miners at Gold Fields, for example, they have been assured at meetings that “the Chinese are just waiting to come in” should their strikes cause mine closures. The assumption is that Chinese investors will happily meet all the demands of labour.

However, if those workers who have been told to look east for economic salvation could consult their comrades in Zambia, they might have a different view: there has been a less than happy relationship there on many Chinese-owned mines. Or they could attend the screening of China Blue, a much-hailed 2005 documentary that is one of the “best of the decade” films to be screened at the Tri Continental human rights Film Festival that opens in Johannesburg today (subs: Friday) and in Cape Town next week.

China Blue is perhaps unique in that it was shot over a year. It follows the progress of a young rural teenager working in what was regarded as one of the better garment factories in that country.

Like the SI and the unions, it provides no answers, but reveals clearly why South African workers cannot compete with their Chinese counterparts — and why they should not wish to do so.

Yes, I agree – there is much fuzzy thinking and rather inappropriate comparisons made with “classical” European fascism (the corporate State of Benito Mussolini, and the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler) and any Third World variant of the Strong Corporatist State et al.

I was re-watching an educational dvd from the International Institute for Research & Education (www.iire.org) on: “Ernest Mandel: A Life for the revolution” a documentary by Chris Den Hond, 90 mins. and in an interview Mandel, an world -renound political economist and political activist, has this to say:

“The REAL function of fascism was to revive the rate of profit after the depression of 1929-32, to smash the workers´organisations (Social-Democratic and Communist) physically in the streets and neighbourhods, and to re-militarize the economy” (that the Keynesian public sector spending and public consumption alternatives – the New Deal etc – were not combatting unemployment which remained high until the re-armament of 1939 i.e. Mandel says that the “share of wages (in the National Income) between the period of 1922 and 1939 was almost constant, while the share of profits increased by 300% ” (NOT 30%).

THAT WAS THE REAL FUNCTION OF THE FASCIST COUNTER-REVOLUTION!

O.K. Fast forwards to 2012 – after 2008 and the crisis of the banking-subprime/housing-loan-scam that started in Wall Street and soon enveloped the global economy, the Western/Eastern capitalist economies have stagnated and “crisis” is written large at their door-steps!

And what is the “solution”?

Take a look at any business paper and you will see the “Bosses Solution”!

You are right. Sadly, the Left still seems relatively moribund, the albatross of Stalinism still hanging about many necks. Illusions in the state persist, with the conflation of state ownership with socialism still widespread. Yet now, courtesy of th ver technology that has cost millions of jobs, we have the communications facility to enable the development of real, grassroots democracy. But it will require education and organisation before there can be any hope of successful agitation.

I agree with your general sentiments. Please read recent copies of ‘Apdusa Views’ on the subject of fascism. Trotskys works on the subject are essential to understanding this phenomenon. In SA we are also dealing with ardent Stalinists to make matters worse. A dangerous cocktail!

A Comment on the Second International: BERNSTEIN’S HEIRS by DYLAN RILEY

Two opposing predictions about the fate of social democracy developed in the nineties.

The first argued that, freed of the Stalinist (sometimes also extended to ‘Marxist’) incubus, social democracy would now flourish, at least in its European homeland.

The second held the project of reforming capitalism was likely to enter a period of steep decline with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the long boom.

This debate is now mostly over as the crisis of the welfare state becomes increasingly obvious.

The question now is how to explain this outcome, and to assess its likely consequences.

Two books that have appeared in recent years provide stimulating if sharply different accounts: The Primacy of Politics by Sheri Berman, a rising star in the American academy and frequent contributor to Dissent, and The Death of Social Democracy by Ashley Lavelle, a tough-minded Australian Trotskyist.

Berman’s crisply written and engaging book suggests that social democracy—not liberalism or Marxism—was the real victor of the ‘age of extremes’; but the left’s amnesia about this historical triumph has led to a debilitating loss of will.

Lavelle’s forceful and intelligent book holds, in contrast, that social democracy’s achievements even in the favourable environment of the long boom were extremely modest.

With the beginning of the long downturn the economic conditions that made the project of reforming capitalism possible are gone, never to return…. @

Perhaps, as I would argue, capitalism could never be refomed because the system is based on competition and the need to accumulate profits in order better to compete. This foundation needs to be ripped up and replaced by one that, in this age of surplus capacity and production, human needs become the priority. I would also argue that social democracy, with its regulatory frameworks etc, has never achieved terribly much and certainly did not — contrary to some ecpressed beliefs — get the world out of the previous “Great” depression. It was a world war that did it. And we could follow a similar trajectory today, with a series of mini wars resulting in massive destruction that will later be in need of reconstruction.

He also writes in his book, South Africa’s Brave New World: The Beloved Country Since the End of Apartheid: ” …

Chapter 2 “Godfathers and Assasins” breaks new ground and presents a ‘Liberation Movement’ that as soon as it came into power prostrated itself at the feet of Johannesburg’s white corporate capital, not only its more respectable face in Gavin Relly of the mining and finance giant Anglo-American, or the insurance magnate Donny Gordan of Liberty Life Foundation, but the likes of hotel, retail bottlestore, casino magnate and sleaze merchant Sol Kerzner and late Afrikaner rebel mining hustler Brett Kebble.

Soon ANC notables were involved in the gambling, casino, crime and prostitution penumbra, with Kerzner as a major ‘Godfather of the Nation’.

A new African kleptocracy was being born while “Die Stem” was still hanging in the air!

The rest is history, as they say. Sleaze, undercover operations and character assinations (and ‘real’ ones) became part of the ANC’s modus operandi in power.

“Ideology” and the once professed goals of poverty amelioration and a “Better Life for All” (ANCs election slogan of 1994), was soon pushed aside as monetary “self-interest”, or plain “greed”, took its place as “an (African) nationalist bourgeoisie was simply replacing an old (Afrikaner) nationalist bourgeoisie at the helm of the state” (p. 17).

Central to this new orientation was ‘bra’ (Brother) Joe Modisie, gangster, boxer, truck-driver, football player, Mandela’s chaffeur and co-founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe, later being its Commander-in-Chief and later Minister of Defense in the new South Africa.

He was thus a central figure in the ‘arms deal’ scandal, allegedly getting a R 10 million bribe for his facilitating role. He died a very rich man with a contested Estate.

But he was also a police spy and double-agent. “The big question about Modise was whether, like so many in the ANC, he was actually a spy for the other side. Or other sides, for once an ANC activist had decided to pass intelligence to ‘the Boers’, it usually followed that he was ready to make sinmilar deals with the CIA, MI5 etc.The evidence against Modise is overwhelming … [p. 31].

Everything about their life in exile and Modise’s post-1994 career also suggests that Modise and [T] Nkobi were both informants for the apartheid security police. Certainly, when I (R W Johnston) interviewed operatives of the old apartheid security police (some by then in Mbeki’s employ), I found they universally agreed that Modise had been a police informer.”

His career in many ways throws light on the unwritten history and trajectory of the African National Congress in exile and Jonhston ironically names him as “The Father of the New South Africa” (pp.46-48). Fellow gangsters like Thomas Nkobi and Alfred Nzo were also to have highly placed positions in the movement, while KwaZulu Natal Stalinist “hardliner” Harry Gwala and his protege Jacob Zuma were to put their own militaristic stamp on the armed strugles of the youth in the late 1980s.

Now with Zuma as President, will the pendulum swing in the direction of dictatorship and a ‘hard line’? There had always “co-existed” many political ideologies and class trajectories in the ANC.

However, there was only one force that held “real” power and dictated “policy” in the years of exile since the early 1960s: the South African Communist Party (SACP). This became clear when the “exiles” returned home and put their indelible “stamp” on the proceedings.

The UDF was soon disbanded… ”

It is this same SACP that opposes the independent struggle of the workers in Marikana and elsewhere on the platinum reef, as this is the new source of income / accumulation and revenue of the likes of Cyril Ramaphosa and many of new African National Congress elite. The “merging” of the interests of NUM/COSATU, the ANC elite and Big Capital are too clear for everone to see!

Will we thus be facing a Military-Authorititarian regime soon: to retore “Order” and “the rate of profit”?

While much of what you say iw interesting and accurate, I would not wish, in any ensense ot be associated with RW Johnson since I consider him to be the sort of analyst who all too often creates smoke in order to speculate about the fires.

But what I find “interesting” in his (RWJ) “analysis” is his iconoclastic attitude and wealth of source references – compare this to a Blade or a Jeremy Cronin or even a Moeletsi Mbeki!

There is also the danger of “Crying Wolf!” too often – I live in Scandinavia and NOBODY wants to hear criticism of “Nelson Mandela´s Party” – I mean “we” have given the ANC all that money and humanitarian help did we not, whether it was to salvage our liberal, humanistic consciences or just to curry favour so as to get “tenders” and kick-backs / market opportunities!

Also, the Left have been extra vocal in their support of the “non-violent non-capitalist road” of the ANC and the career-opportunities and funding opened up by “South Africa Research” quite enormous – as long as you play the game and feed the populace “what they want to hear”!

I´ve tried for 40 years to say that the Populist National Democratic Revolution is of Stalinist mid-1930s vintage, and can only lead to an authoritarian and neo-fascistic counter-revolution.

But maybe now some people might begin to think differently after 16th August 2012.

>>”But maybe now some people might begin to think differently after 16th August 2012.”

No, most don’t think differently and whites are demonized as the worst order racist thinkable in generalized fashion by all and sundry, including people like Prof Jane Duncan that should know better, just because they are very very critical of the behavior of tribalists, Stalinists and criminals that murder, rape and rob with impunity – nobody in his or her right mind will criticize people merely because they are black or white.

Nobody can change his or her skin pigmentation but some must be forced to change unacceptable chauvinistic behavior. .

Thirty (30) out of every 100 000 South-Africans are murdered whilst the international average is 7,6/100 000 – SA on average record 44 murders and 154 rapes each and every day.

Read “Into the Cannibal’s Pot”

“Ilana Mercer’s well-documented, encompassing study is at once heartbreaking, infuriating, illuminating and instructive.

Ethnic cleansing is underway in the once great nation of South Africa, but Americans hear nothing of it; they are deliberately shielded by the same parties that served to bring it about, the liberal elites in Western governments and the press who believe that white South Africans ‘have it coming.’

It is white guilt and the so-called right of black reprisal extrapolated to ghastly extremes; political correctness on steroids, and all in the name of craven progressive ideology.

If the West is ever to occupy anything resembling moral high ground – not to mention avoiding this fate itself – it will have to come to terms with its part in South Africa’s demise, and the misery, degradation and naked horror of those who now suffer.” E Rush

“Black people want the wealth they were promised” – Zwelinzima Vavi 06 September 2012.

I have approved this comment only to show any who read through it, the degree of confusion that exists among the former beneficiaries of apartheid, many of whom hide under the guise of former liberals. In effect, they belong to the the mis-named libertarian Right. Suffice to say that Ilana Mercer’s book received a rave review from the John Birch Society. However, with some application of reason, out of confusion can come forth clarity. At least one can so hope.

Glad you approved it, Terry. As distasteful as it is, I think it’s important to allow such thinking to be expressed openly so that it can be contextualised and responded to. Here’s some of the context:

Percentage of children living in households with a per capita income of less than R570 per person per month, by population group, 2010:

An excellent article and a warning that democracy is of especial importance to workers and the socially disadvantaged. For those who are interested in happenings across the ocean, I attach my most recent essay, that – strangely enough – is also about incipient fascism:
Armies of the Pure: the question of Indian fascismhttp://dilipsimeon.blogspot.in/2012/09/armies-of-pure-question-of-indian.html
With regards to all

Having read your essay, I can only say that I not only approve, but am most impressed. We now live in a global village and no one corner of it should be seen in isolation from the rest. All strength to your pen — and the activism that will hopefully flow from it.

Actually Terry, you may be right: ” …. out of confusion can come forth clarity…” but from my mountain-top viewpoint in West Telemark (600 m. a.s.l and a lake nearby with forests and the Hardnagevidde (plains) nearby, thus pleanty of hydro-electricity to sell to Sweden and Europe and reindeer to hunt) things always look worse not better, as I can see from this link I hereby provide:

And as I am 3 hours away from the multicultural capital of the North – you have to actually see and experience it to belive it – no wonder Mr Anders B. Breivik went crazy at seeing all these brown-skinned hustlers stealing the women and the social scurity benefits and made his marke on history – I will remain here and observe!

The discussion in this stream is confusing to say the least. Fascism in my understanding presupposes the state apparatus. The conjoining elements are the state apparatus, the leading corporations (capitalist structures) and populist tendencies, often with an ethnic overlayering so as to buy the masses into the ruling project. So the masses are tramping on themselves. It seems that the tendency here is to think that the striking miners are potentially fascist because of being led by Julius Malema or some such. But let us keep the lines straight: first of all it is the Lonmins of this world, by grossly underpaying its workers, that is to blame, plus a government that allows it to do so. The claim that the platinum prices are such that the poor mining company cannot pay more is ridiculous in the extreme.

Correct analysis. And I, for one, did not say the miners were fascist. Merely that Julius Malema was playing the role. Because we should never forget one aspect of capitalism: it is dominated by a “hostile band of brothers”. Some of the nationally-based “brothers” are the backers of Malema, seeking to improve their own positions and to crush unions in the process. This does not absolve the Lonmins of this world that have used and abused the workers in one way while Malema and his cohorts are trying to do same in a different way.